Intruders picked the wrong North Carolina house last week, incurring gunfire when they kicked in the door of the home of a young mother who had just finished breastfeeding her baby.
Fortunately for Semantha Bunce, a 21-year-old Army National Guard combat medic, she had her firearm and the Second Amendment to protect her.
Bunce exchanged gunfire with the burglars on Nov. 3. She suffered several gunshot wounds, although her baby was unharmed.
Reco Latur Dawkins Jr., a 23-year-old man with a criminal record dating to his teens, turned himself in to Charlotte-Mecklenburg police on Sunday to answer a charge of attempted murder.
“Breast milk for the baby and bullets for the bad guys,” said Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America.
A friend of Bunce has set up a gofundme page to help raise money for her medical expenses, and her husband’s employer set up a youcaring page.
“I think it was a shock to the intruders just as it was to her,” father-in-law Paul Bunce Jr. told CBS affiliate WBTC. “Semantha is not out of the woods yet. Everybody is concerned about her.”
Semantha Bunce expressed her gratitude on her Facebook page on Nov. 9 to friends and strangers alike.
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“Thank you, thank you, thank you for all the undying support,” she wrote. “It means the absolute world to me and my family to have your support during this time of tragedy.”
[lz_ndn video-29917201]Claude Werner, who owns Firearms Safety Training in Atlanta, said gun owners most of the time do not have to actually fire the weapon to prevent an attack. He said he has used his gun 12 different times to deter attacks, including once when he scared off three would-be robbers on the subway.
None of those cases, Werner said, required him to actually shoot.
“Just because someone uses a gun for self-defense — we call that defensive gun use — that does not mean that shots were fired,” he said.
Werner estimated that guns are used in self-defense about 400,000 to 1.5 million times a year.
Said Pratt: “The fact of the matter is, it happens a lot. A lot of it doesn’t get reported.”
Pratt said most gun owners do not want to kill people.
“They just want to get home alive,” he said.
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